Football: Quarterback rankings, 2005-2007

Important note (Oct. 28): An error on my part threw off the 2007 numbers. This post remains for archival purposes only, not for reference. A corrected version of this post is here. Kids, always proofread your work.

A few notes before the rankings:

I used adjusted net yards per pass attempt (which counts sack yardage, adds 10 yards per TD, and penalizes 45 yards per INT) for all quarterbacks with at least 112 attempts. (UPDATE: As noted by Greg Layson, rushing yardage/TDs don't count here.) This number was then compared to their conference average, under the assumption that some conferences are more conducive to the passing game than others.

The second number below is adjusted net yards per attempt. First number, which they're ranked by, compares the player to his league, with 100 representing league average. Bigger than 100 is that much above conference average, less than 100 is that much below (e.g., 74 is 26% below).

Brief example: "1. 167, 9.6, John Makie" means Makie led the CIS that year, and passed for 9.6 adjusted yards per attempt, which was 67% better than the CanWest average.

With that out of the way, let's see the rankings. I've included everyone, not just the top 10 or top 20:

Now, crunching the numbers is all well and good, but this is where you come in to provide context, reader. For instance, these rankings (which are only called "rankings" to spark debate, not declare "Orban is #6") may mirror the quality of the team and not necessarily the QB, but I have to say more sophistication makes little sense when the quality and size of the statistics we have aren't great. Other comments are welcome.

It also goes without saying that, in a few weeks from now when real games start, you'll have a much more current version of all this "adjusted net yards per attempt" business.

5 comments:

-Glavic finished no better than 4th but beat out Sacobie, who ranks first, for the Hec.

-that Teale Orban who has often been touted by some as the best QB in the CIS has never ranked higher then sixth

-that Brannagan did so well last season, I always thought that he was inconsistent. When he is good he is very good, but he has turned in some pretty bad performances in the last three years as well. Probably has not helped that once you get by Rob Bagg, he has not had a particularly impressive receiver corps.

-that Sacobie improves a lot each season. Bodes well for this season where he also will have a pretty good veteran receiving corps and a decent o-line.

-that Matt Connell ranks so low each year. Yet he along with Sacobie, has a shot at surpassing the current all-time CIS passing yardage record. Both may do it

The touters aren't evaluating Teale solely on yardage. He QB'd a team for 3 years that had absolutely no running game and not much of an OLine, yet they were often competitive mainly because of him. Last year was the first time that he had some run support and protection.

Laurence Nixon making it into the top 10, in his first season as starter, when he had the worst pass protection that Huskie fans have seen, confirms that he is going to be a good one.

Very interesting to see that this system ranks Brannagan so highly, and that he improved so much last year. It seems to be one of those rare occasions of statistics confirming impressions: Brannagan looked much better last season than he had previously, even if his previous years were still pretty good. The funny thing is that he had a great year and not many people noticed, because Mike Giffin was getting a lot of the credit for the Gaels' success. Brannagan does much better under this combined ranking than he does in any one stat alone (yards, completion percentage, TDs, lack of INTs, etc). This stat shows that he was effective when the Gaels decided to throw (especially considering that his receiving corps wasn't too scary, as the first commenter noted), even if they weren't as pass-happy as many teams.